Finite Incantatum
by Kay Taylor
Summary: BillCharlie, sequel to Every You And Every Me. Memory, deception and loss (amnesia and angst). Part two of three.


**Author's note:** yes, this is post-Hogwarts Online fic. The original idea was sparked off by a group of HO players who continued playing under the new name of Finite Incantatum, and effectively re-wrote the entire back story to erase the Bill/Charlie relationship. It made me think what if...  
  
I've tried to write this so it makes sense for non-Hogwarts Online readers, but if anyone is really lost, the relevant plot events are summarised at the end of the story.  
  
**Finite Incantatum**  
  
He wakes to light, light streaming through the windows, bouncing off the white walls, and it's like the light is _screaming_, and he scrunches up his eyes and feels for his wand but it's not under his pillow, and there's a brief impression that there's something missing from the pillow beside him, something lacking, and that something is red hair, spilling over the sheets -  
  
And then he passes out again.  
  
It's two months before Charlie wakes up, but it takes him three months before he can talk again, four months before he's ready to get out of bed, to sit up and look around the white-walled room in St Mungo's, to run his fingers over the curious white patterns on his arms, scars that he can no longer remember getting. There's one just by the crook of his elbow that looks a little like a dragon, and that fits; he can remember dragons. He can remember scales and teeth and fire, and it isn't until another week has gone by that he wakes up screaming, remembering the Death Eater strike over the Welsh mountains, the terrible sound of heavy wings and the Dark Mark hanging low in the sky, and black-cloaked figures mounted on dragons.   
  
They came in July, the nurses told him. They made short work of the shields around the dragon breeding grounds, and they used some sort of mind-control magic, something that made the dragons take to the skies and paint the horizon with fire. They came with whips, and muzzles, and did something which the Council had been trying to do for decades. They rode the dragons.  
  
And there the nurses usually stop, because it's no use trying to tell Charlie about the strike on London, the dragons coming over Westminster, beating their bat-wings as they came up towards the Ministry, and the sound of Muggle screams mingling with the sounds of useless Stupefying charms, and then the deep, rumbling crash of the magic holding the Ministry together getting shaken to the foundations. There's more to it, of course - there's the counter-strike against the Dark Lord's army, there's the giants marching from the mountains, crossing the Channel in a matter of minutes, and there's the final duel, fought between the Boy Who Lived and his nemesis, which took place when the skies were clouded with dragon-smoke and the Dementors had finally taken the south side of the river.   
  
It's no use trying to tell Charlie about these things, because he was unconscious for two months, while the battle raged. And it's no use trying to explain it slowly, because something's happened to Charlie's memory, and it's like holding water in a sieve. All he can remember is dragons, and a childhood in Ottery St Catchpole.  
  
Bill has been visiting Charlie for weeks, even since he was unconscious. He could trace the steps in his sleep - through the main entrance, where the great iron girders are holding up the caved-in roof, along the hallway towards the broken lifts, and up, up, up, six flights of stairs to the Casualty wing. Just that - Casualty. Nothing more, no explanations of what happened to the people inside. Casualty. And Bill knows the way well, because he didn't get out of the Casualty wing until the battle for London was over. And he knows what it's like to forget who you are, because really, Bill remembers very little more than Charlie does.  
  
He was caught by the first attack on the north wall at Tregoyd, though his memory is patchy at best. He thinks he can remember them coming over the hills in waves, although he might have patched that together from what Bran has told him. He thinks that they took the wall with Dissolution charms, though he's no idea how they got through the preliminary wards on Caer Caradoc, because those wards are - were - iron-strong, and surrounded the reserve for miles on miles of white-hot charms. He can remember placing them on himself, him and Bran, on a rainy spring day, and he can remember that he slipped and fell into the water's edge as he was finishing the third incantation from the right, and he can remember that he was wearing worn blue jeans with dragonhide boots. But he can't remember whether he put up much of a fight when the Death Eaters came through. He can only remember a brilliant flash of blue light, and falling, and nothing.  
  
Bill was let out of the heavily battered St Mungo's when Harry Potter's victory was still being splashed all over the Daily Prophet, when the last charms and memory hexes were being used to patch the memory of a hundred Muggles - those who lived. As far as the Muggle world was concerned, there had been a terrorist attack. Suicide bombers. A quick and effective evacuation of the city centre. None of them remembered the giants marching five abreast up the Thames, or Trafalgar Square filled with a seething mass of Dementors, addressed by Lucius Malfoy from the foot of Nelson's Column. And Bill stumbled out into this new London, the headache still refusing to go away, and headed home to Ottery St Catchpole, where at least he remembers things. The twins. Baby Ginny, banging on the kitchen table with her toy wand. And his brother Charlie, hanging upside-down off the swing in the back garden, almost falling off with laughter.  
  
Bill has two tattoos, which surprised him the first time he was allowed to take a bath without the help of the nurses. A tiny ladybird, and if he concentrates hard enough he can remember his father telling him that he was married, once, so he supposes that it might be a memory of his wife. And high up on his shoulder, there's a dragon. He knows that one's for Charlie, and he expects there's some story about how he got it; a drunken stag party, maybe, or some night out on the town when they were teenagers.  
  
He wonders if Charlie has one for him, as well.  
  
I have a book, Charlie tells Bill sheepishly. I'm writing down things that I remember, or that I think I remember.  
  
Bill nods. How's your writing?  
  
Not so good, Charlie says, then frowns. Though, if I worked with dragons, I can't think -  
  
That you needed to do much writing anyway? Bill finishes for him, and Charlie nods.   
  
Bill tells him about the tattoos, and it makes him smile. He's able to supply Bill with a name, though, a name he's forgotten even though his father wrote it down patiently that very morning: Maggie.   
  
Do you remember anything about her? Bill asks Charlie.  
  
She was... Charlie starts, struggling.   
  
And he gives up, because his memory of Bill's wife is like everything else between his first day at Hogwarts and the dragon strike - it twists and turns, and he can't catch onto it. He does think that he didn't like Maggie much, but he can't tell why he thinks that. The name has a bitter taste for him, though.  
  
We must have quarrelled, or something, he says.  
  
Bill can't remember anything about his wife, really. His father has told him that she laughed a lot, and that they were happy, for a while. He's told Bill about the wedding - who was there, where they held it, that Charlie was the best man and dropped the ring. And all Bill can scrape up from everything is a honeymoon, and kisses in the dark, on a hot night when the air smelled like the sea. He can remember a warm body, and running his hands through hair.  
  
I think she had red hair, Bill says. And he puts his hand on Charlie's shoulder, and they sit in silence for a while, trying to remember the woman Bill loved.  
  
Charlie is ready to come home by October, and he recognises the house as soon as he sees it, with all its ramshackle roofs and crazy chimneys, and the chickens scratching in the yard, getting thinner without Molly to feed them twice a day. He points up to the gable above the kitchen roof as they step off the Knight Bus, and Bill puts out an arm to steady him. That was our room, wasn't it?  
  
And Bill smiles, because their childhood is their only common currency, now, and he can remember the dusty attic, the ivy at the windows, and sitting in Charlie's bed with the covers over his head, reading a comic after their mother had told them to go to sleep. Yes. It was.  
  
The attic is still the way it looks in those memories - peeling paint around the windows, and a red-and-orange Quidditch bedspread that makes Bill cover his eyes and pretend to be blinded, teasing his thirty-two year-old brother for his twelve-year-old bad taste, and Charlie flushes and tries, haphazardly, to charm the covers into a more sober shade of blue. It doesn't work, of course - neither of the brothers are much good at magic, when they can't remember their OWLS or their NEWTS or anything much in between. But the Snitches turn a vile shade of purple, and it makes Bill laugh even harder, and somehow between them they manage to animate the cheap ink and fabric, making the Bludgers and Quaffles go racing crazily around the bedspread.   
  
Bill's bed is more sensible, of course, because he was older, or maybe because he hadn't nagged his mother for weeks to get him the World Cup merchandise. He has deep red sheets, a white pillow - beaten out of shape, and Bill can remember the pillow-fights as if they were yesterday - and a bedside table covered in books. There are deep grooves in the wooden floor between the beds, and both brothers wonder about them. Charlie concludes that they used the bedframes to make a den, and had to push them together. Bill supposes that if you wanted to jump on a bed, two would be better for one, and it would be easier to push them together. The grooves are deep, worn into the wood. Both of them wonder why the beds were pushed together so _often_.  
  
It's only now he's home that Charlie really recognises the absence of his mother, who went into Diagon Alley one day and didn't come back. His father refuses to grieve for her, and it seems to Charlie that it's because he's still hoping she'll come back, dusting off her skirts in the fireplace and complaining about delays on the Floo Network. But Molly has been gone for almost three months, and the twins have told him that they've made their own private memorial to her, in the paddock behind the hedge, where Arthur can't see it from the house. No-one really thinks she's going to come back, and the house seems smaller without her, somehow. There are no knitting needles clacking away in the front room, no mixing bowls stirring themselves in the kitchen. Just the sound of the chickens in the yard, and the Wizarding wireless on the front doorstep, singing out news of the war's end as Charlie bends his head over a little scribbled book of half-remembered thoughts.  
  
Arthur doesn't know what to tell his boys, his grown-up sons with so many questions. He can tell them what happened in the months that Charlie was sleeping, and show them a pile of collected issues of the Daily Prophet, with the headlines full of blood and anguish. He can go back further, and show them letters which they'd written from the dragon reserve in Tregoyd. Charlie's handwriting is a lot messier than Bill's, and he isn't so good at punctuation. Bill's hand is steady and clear, telling his parents about summer storms which tear the slates off the mountain cottages, about inconsequential wounds and scrapes, and weekends away in Pembrokeshire. He can go back further than that, and tell them about their house in Hogsmeade, and their dog, and how Charlie ended up in England again - dragons, again dragons, and deep scratch-marks on Charlie's back. He can tell them about Ron's death, and the funeral, and the World Cup. But whenever he thinks about telling them the truth, why they lived together, why there was only one bedroom in the house in Hogsmeade, his eyes are drawn to the carpet in the front room. He remembers staring fixedly at it, making his eyes follow the swirling patterns and old forgotten stains, trying to block out the fact that his sons were sitting on the sofa and awkwardly, hesitantly, trying to tell their father and mother that they were in love. He remembers burning his fingers on the kettle in the kitchen, and the horrible sickening feeling when he realised that his sons had been - fucking - together under his roof, and the unbidden image that came to mind, all red hair and gasps and Charlie's head buried in Bill's crotch.  
  
He doesn't tell them.  
  
We should go back to school, Bill tells Charlie, sitting on the kitchen table and watching his brother clumsily trying to light the stove with his new wand. They had to go to Ollivander's when they left the hospital, the new Ollivander's in the new Diagon Alley, and pick out new wands for themselves. Charlie's used to be nine-inch cedar, but now it's six-inch maple, and Bill doesn't know if that means Charlie has changed, as well as his wand, because doesn't the wand fit the wizard, not the other way around? Even so, Charlie is inept with his new wand, dropping it more often than not, and Bill can tell that it's frustrating him that it's making flowers bloom over the saucepans.  
  
Charlie grins. Who'd take us? I don't remember there being many thirty-odd amnesiacs wandering around Hogwarts when we were there.  
  
Bill can't resist pointing out that Charlie doesn't remember many people being at Hogwarts, really, at which his brother scowls and makes an enormous fuschia appear behind Bill's right ear.   
  
Seriously, though, Bill says. Maybe we should send off for one of those Kwik-Spell things.  
  
Charlie pretends to study the flower. I think it's quite fetching, myself.  
  
Bill laughs. Well, I'd better take it out before our guests get here, though. I don't want anyone thinking I've changed _that_ much.  
  
Ginny is still a baby in their memories of her, with fat cheeks and a permanent giggle, and it still startles Bill to see her all grown up, slender and with her long red hair pinned back neatly at the nape of her neck. She's still family, though, and the two brothers can talk to her without feeling embarrassed at how little they know about her. There's a look she gives them which unsettles Bill slightly, though - her eyes dart between the two of them for a split second, as if she's searching for something written on their faces, before she grins and gives them a hug, reaching up to put her arms around Charlie's neck. She's brought them things found in the wreckage at the dragon reserve, things which belonged to them; a shoe-box full of this and that, which she leaves in the hallway as she takes her coat off. Charlie reaches down into the box and pulls out a tiny charm on a silver chain - a Chinese Fireball, flashing its fangs and flapping its minature wings. Bill stands behind him, nervous that the sight of a dragon, even a tiny charm dragon, will set off Charlie's nightmares again. But Charlie just smiles, and turns to Ginny, folding the chain into the palm of his hand.  
  
Thanks, Gin.  
  
Then he looks at Bill, and nods in response to the look on his brother's face. Yes - a girl - gave me this. She had... dark hair. And Charlie looks over at Ginny, hope written all over his face. She worked in a shop?  
  
Ginny can't hide the sudden look of unease, before breaking out into a radiant smile. Yes. Yes, she did. Her name was Pansy. You both worked in a shop.  
  
_Our_ shop, the twins tell him later. Both of you. Our joke shop.  
  
And Fred looks up at his older brother, noticing the distant look in Charlie's eyes. You used to have picnics by the cash register.  
  
Bill hears this, and he's almost jealous, because that's a whole memory that Charlie can piece together, with this girl, and her gift, and their brothers' shop. But really, he can't begrudge Charlie anything, not his favourite brother. So he nudges Charlie in the ribs, and waggles his eyebrows, and says Pansy, eh? and makes Charlie take a swipe at him with a cushion. Neither of them turn around in time to see Ginny frantically signalling at Fred and George to shut up, to leave out the rest of the story: that Pansy was a Death Eater. And not a girlfriend.  
  
Other people arrive. Some of them are instantly familiar, even though Bill and Charlie can't remember meeting them before; but Harry and Hermione Potter have been all over the front pages for months now, and Bill feels slightly odd to be shaking hands with this celebrity, even though Ginny assures him that he knows Harry from before the attack. He feels even odder shaking hands with Hermione, who he's sure he recognises. Curly hair. Brown eyes. A certain curve to the lips. She smiles at him, and talks to him a little about the World Cup that the Weasleys had taken her and Harry to, when she was fourteen. She tells him so much about the stalls and the tents, and the way the leprechauns danced that for a minute Bill can almost remember being there, he's sure he can remember wrestling the Omnioculars off Ron for a close-up of the Bulgarian team, and then it's gone in a second when he glances across the room and sees Charlie scribbling something down in his little notebook. Pansy, no doubt, and Bill feels that surge of jealousy again, that Charlie has found something anchoring him to the past when Bill can't even remember his own wife.  
  
But there's a suspicion which grows all evening, until his hands brush against Hermione's when she passes the mashed potatos at dinner, and he follows Ginny into the back garden. She's sitting on the steps into the vegetable plot and smoking, and for a minute he's shocked.  
  
Ginny must have heard him coming out, because she turns around, the cigarette held crookedly in her fingers, and says: Don't start with the elder-brother thing, Bill, I've had it enough from the twins. She takes a drag, making the tip flare bright in the unkempt garden, and adds: From the twins! Of all people!  
  
Bill is about to say that he's hardly entitled to do the elder-brother thing, all things considered, when he realises that she's probably forgotten for a moment, that this is probably something she's said to him in the past, but he doesn't know it. So he sits down beside her, and says nothing, and she looks up.  
  
Sorry, Bill. I didn't -  
  
No, it's okay, he says quietly.  
  
I started after Mum went, she says, looking out towards the paddock. It's funny, isn't it, how we all still say she went'. Like we're still certain she's going to come back. She pauses. But I suppose it's for Dad's benefit, really.  
  
Bill puts his hand on her arm, and she turns to look at him.   
  
It's probably nothing, but was Hermione -  
  
Ginny nods. Yes, she was.  
  
  
  
You and her lasted... Ginny pauses, trying to calculate, Maybe a few weeks. But it wasn't just a fling, I mean, you were both really... you cared about each other a lot. You looked really good together.  
  
Bill sits on the steps, feeling the stone chill against his skin, and lets this sink in. He doesn't really want to ask how it ended, but he supposes he should, and starts: And then Harry -  
  
But Ginny gets up, as if she's heard something indoors. I bet dessert is ready, now, she says, not looking at him. If Charlie hasn't managed to hex the whole kitchen yet, I mean.  
  
And Bill follows her back inside, and sits down next to Hermione, and spends the rest of the meal trying to conjure up the way she kissed.  
  
Ginny sits on the front doorstep after Harry and Hermione and the twins have left, and smokes. She thinks about the last time she stayed over at Bill and Charlie's house in Hogsmeade, just before she went away to Italy, and she remembers a warm bath, a soft bed, her brothers talking to her over mugs of hot chocolate. She remembers falling asleep sandwiched between them in their big double bed, to the rise and fall of deep breathing. But most of all, she thinks about seeing Bill kiss Charlie on the forehead when he got up to fetch more chocolate, and about them holding hands across the table, and seeing Charlie's eyes - just for a second - roam over the planes of his brother's bare chest, before they got into bed. She thinks about walking into Bill's kitchen to scream at him for ruining a perfectly good thing with Hermione for a one-night stand, and stopping cold in her tracks, and grabbing the counter for balance, as Bill said Charlie, of course, and she was forced to confront the fact that her brothers - her dependable older brothers - were falling in love.  
  
She inhales. She exhales.   
  
She gets up and goes into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, intending to clear her head before she gets the Floo home to Hogsmeade. And she finds her father sitting at the kitchen table, reading pale-pink sheets of parchment that she recognises as Charlie's medical records, sheets and sheets of meticulous script.   
  
Her father looks up, holding a sheet entitled Charles Edward Weasley: Amnesia and Dyscantata'. He's drinking black coffee, which she knows he hates, and he looks as though he hasn't had a decent night's sleep in days.  
  
You're not going to tell them, are you, Ginny says, and it's not even a question.  
  
Slowly, Arthur Weasley shakes his head. Gin, love, they're -  
  
Better off like this? she finishes for him. And then turns and storms out of the kitchen, leaving her father sitting alone in the dark.  
  
Ooooh, _Pansy_, Bill teases Charlie. You were going out with someone named after a flower?  
  
Grow up, Bill, Charlie calls from the other side of the room, wrestling his shirt over his head. You were with someone whose name I can't even _pronounce_.  
  
They sit with the shoe-box of memories between them, and Bill takes things out of it one by one. There's a single dragon-hide gauntlet, which is too small for Bill but fits Charlie perfectly, though it's missing several fingers and there's a burn right down the left side where the material is pucked and torn, darned clumsily in leather. There's a wizarding photograph of Charlie with a dog, both of them bedgraggled and wet, and Charlie has twigs in his hair, as though he'd dived in the river with the dog and come up underneath a tree. The dog's name is Jenny, they know, because Hermione told Bill over dinner. There's a small pot of burn salve, covered with sticky fingerprints, which smells of mint and pine when they open it. But neither of them can remember anything more than they did yesterday, or the day before that, about their time on the Tregoyd dragon reserve.   
  
And when Charlie goes to sleep, it's like his dreams are clouded with this strange memory-fog as well; he can hear voices, but not see the faces, and smells come back to him that he can only vaguely place. He dreams about his childhood at the Burrow most of all, and his dreams are filled with Bill. They build treehouses together, go to the village fair, dangle their feet in streams on hot summer days and read _Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle_ together. He can catch glimpses of a tall, red-haired boy with spectacles that he's sure must be his brother Percy, and a small, freckled boy that he thinks might be Ron, because seeing him always makes him feel sad. And the night after the dinner party, he has dreams about a girl with expensive clothes and dark hair bending over a book full of numbers, a girl with serious eyes and a dab of cream on her nose, and he supposes that must be Pansy, though he can't remember kissing her.  
  
He tells Bill about this dream, and Bill rubs his eyes and squints in the morning light and asks him questions about it, trying to work the memories out of his brother's head somehow, but Charlie finds that the images crumble in daylight, and all he's left with is the impression of cream tea and scones.   
  
Worse than the dreams about the dragons, and the dreams that promise memories they can't deliver, are the dreams Charlie gets when it's hot at night, when they've thrown the attic windows open to let in the autumn air and wake up to find leaves in drifts on the wooden floor. He wakes up to find the sheets sticking to him, and a dull tingling low in his crotch, and he thinks that it's odd, and slightly embarrassing, that a man in his thirties is starting to have wet dreams again. But worse than the clinging sheets are the dreams themselves, and he remembers - briefly - the feel of stubble on his skin, of hair that smells of dragon-smoke and the mountains, of hair falling in sheets over his face, red hair over tanned shoulders, strong arms, and a green dragon tattoo.  
  
Christmas is the last they're together, and then Bill and Charlie are parted again. On the advice of St Mungo's, Bill is going to stay in Hogsmeade, close to their old school, where he can take courses on magic and wander around the village and try to piece together his schooldays, because more than anything, Bill wants to have his magic back. Charlie is going to Romania, to the snow and mountains which were his home for more than a decade, to find his memories in the beating of monstrous wings, the healing of dragons injured in the war. And all that Charlie knows is that he doesn't want to let Bill go, he can't _bear_ to be taken from him, and he's surprised by the intensity of his feelings.  
  
Years ago -  
  
Outside Tregoyd House, Bill promising to write -  
  
Not looking back -  
  
Charlie thinks he can remember leaving Bill before, a very long time ago, and he gets the impression of a salty taste in his mouth, the cold mountain air chilling the tears on his cheeks, winding his fingers in Bill's hair for the last time. And it scares him, that he can remember it hurting so much.  
  
Percy comes home for the last few days before they leave, and it makes Charlie laugh to find that their brother is almost exactly how he remembers him: serious Percy, curled up in an armchair with a book far too big for his little-boy hands, spelling the words out with his finger. He shakes hands with them, and says something about not wanting to intrude, and something else which Charlie doesn't understand about - not getting on well with them in the past, or something - and then takes his jacket off and sits down with them, putting two sugars in his tea and drinking it slowly. Percy has no new memories for the brothers, but it bothers Charlie that he seems almost wary of them, somehow.   
  
He also notices that Percy and Ginny have a fight on the day that Ginny comes home, and he hears them arguing about whether or not to tell Bill and Charlie something.  
  
When he goes into the kitchen, Percy is sitting at the kitchen table, calmly peeling an apple with a small paring-knife, curling the peel off in one meticulous motion. Ginny is staring out of the window, her arms folded, and Charlie suddenly remembers something he's wanted to ask her for a long time.  
  
How did Pansy and I - break up?  
  
He heard Percy put the knife down on the table. Ginny doesn't turn around.   
  
You didn't break up, Charlie, she says in a voice like steel. In fact -  
  
She died, Charlie, Percy says quietly.  
  
Three days after arriving in Hogsmeade, Bill wakes up sweating, the blood pounding behind his ears, hot and aroused and confused all at once. The sheets are clinging to his legs, and he struggles out of them, walking across the tiny room to the basin.  
  
Oooh, you're looking hot and bothered, love, the mirror tells him when he whispers an exhausted Lumos' and cups his hands full of cold water. He ignores it, and wipes his face clean, feeling his heart thudding away in his chest as if it was about to rise up out of his throat. He doesn't think he has the strength or the energy to spell the sheets clean, and strips them off the bed, thinking that he'd rather be dry than warm.  
  
He's only just curled up on the bed and closed his eyes when the mirror asks him, conversationally, who Charlotte is.  
  
The mountains are strange and familiar all at once. Charlie can remember the routes through the passes with startling accuracy, and he even surprises himself by being able to speak a spattering of Romanian to the local villagers, though he can't remember having met any of them before. He can recognise the peak he used to live beneath, and the South Peak brood - a handful of dragons bigger than large dogs - come scrabbling and rolling out of the cave beneath the cliff to meet him, and he knows to stand still and let them see him. He can remember them as screeching, squawking hatchlings, and to his immense delight they remember him as well, following him like a green-and-gold flock of sheep as he crests the mountain and approaches the watchtower, standing gaunt and blackened against the grey sky.   
  
And he recognises Iestyn, Under-Provost of the Carpathian reserve, as he comes running to meet him, toppling him over into the snow, his arms thrown around Charlie's neck.   
  
Everyone is talking at once, and Charlie can't keep up. There's a girl he's sure he should recognise, and there's Iestyn, and there's a stern-faced man with grey eyes and a scar on his left cheek.  
  
We thought you were -  
  
Can't believe you've come back -  
  
When we didn't get replies to the letters, we -  
  
Hundreds wounded, all the help we can - This from the grey-eyed man, who has a Provost's mark looped around his neck on a leather thong, and is carrying what looks like a very old and rusty crossbow.  
  
You had me worried, Char - This from Iestyn, who's brushing Charlie off with a sort of shame-faced exuberance, wiping snow off Charlie's clothes and grabbing some of the bags and packages away from the brood of golden-horned dragons milling around him. For a moment, Charlie's head reels, and he remembers someone else calling him Char', only it's not a memory so much as a fleeting glimpse of pale, bare skin, an impression of being touched and being held, and it's gone as quickly as it comes, and Charlie is left looking at Iestyn, who flushes suddenly and turns away.   
  
I recognise you, Charlie says later, when they're sitting on the watchtower at sunset. I couldn't recognise anyone back in England, but I knew who you were straight away.  
  
Iestyn looks at him and grins. We've known each other for a long time, you know. Like brothers.  
  
Charlie says slowly. Like brothers, I suppose. After all, hadn't he recognised Bill?  
  
Time passes differently in the mountains, Charlie finds. There are no papers marking the days since the great Wizarding war, no wireless, nothing apart from the weather getting colder and the days getting darker, and the stream of injured and crippled dragons being returned home slowly drying up, and then the wounds and scars themselves healing, slow as dragon-hide grows, because dragons live so much longer than humans. He can tell it's getting towards spring, because it gets so much darker before winter breaks in the Carpathians. And anyway, the only real reason he has to mark the days is because Bill promises to write every week, and he's as good as his word.   
  
Charlie reads about Hogsmeade, and it seems like another world - the snow is thin on the ground, Bill writes, but not too thin for the Hogwarts pupils to be having snowball fights outside the Three Broomsticks, where he's staying. Bill has been to their old house, and he thinks he can remember what it looks like inside, although he got some funny looks for sitting outside it for an afternoon. Bill is doing well with his magic courses, although he's still nowhere near OWL standard, even, and he's met some teachers in the pub who remember him at school, and can't believe he can't even do a simple Jelly-Legs Jinx. Bill has met a girl who's staying in Hogsmeade to do research on the flora and fauna of the Forbidden Forest. Bill thinks that she'd get on really well with Charlie, with her love of dangerous magical creatures. Bill has, in his own words, well, sort of - we pulled last night, and I'm going to see her this evening -'  
  
It seems like another world, Charlie thinks, and he misses Bill terribly.  
  
He's hazy about the passage of time, which is why he doesn't know exactly when it is - whether it's closer to New Year or February - when he first realises, or remembers, that he likes men.   
  
Charlie is sitting on the watchtower, wrapped in an old woollen blanket, when Iestyn sneaks up behind him and yells boo!' in his ear, like a little boy would, and Charlie jumps out of his skin and falls over, pulling Iestyn to the ground.  
  
And suddenly it's all _there_, and it's so clear that it's like Charlie is getting hit with a sledgehammer, and he can't breathe, and he knows that he remembers Iestyn because he remembers Iestyn's lips wrapped around his cock, he remembers sliding warm hands over slick skin, he remembers the rub of stubble on his inner thighs, and Iestyn laughs at the shocked expression on Charlie's face before realising that this is deadly serious.  
  
Charlie sits up cautiously, Iestyn still almost sitting in his lap, and exhales slowly. Iestyn - did we - I mean?  
  
We were lovers, a long time ago, Iestyn says, looking down at the wooden planking. I mean, I don't know if you remember at all, but -  
  
No, I _remember_, Charlie insists, and tilts Iestyn's face upwards to look at him. I remember. I've never liked girls, have I?  
  
Iestyn shakes his head, and Charlie can feel the roughness of his half-beard against the tips of Charlie's fingers.   
  
And then, impulsively, Charlie leans forward and kisses him, for giving him back a little piece of his identity. Iestyn tastes like the salt the villagers use to preserve their meat in the winter, and his tongue is surprisingly hot, and Charlie finds himself sliding his hand up under Iestyn's jumper, feeling the hardness of his chest, the soft skin around his nipples, and thinking - this must be what the dreams were about -  
  
And it isn't too long before they're back indoors, in the tiny cot-bed in Iestyn's hut, and hurrying to pull each other out of their clothes, because now Charlie knows, and he wants. There's a brief, confused moment when Iestyn looks at him oddly and says But what about - and Charlie can't think what he's going to say, and covers Iestyn's lips with his own, and kisses him so hard and deep he's almost afraid Iestyn will choke. And Iestyn breaks off, and mutters, Bill - and something Charlie can't catch, and Charlie flattens the palm of his hand against the smooth contours of Iestyn's cock, and teases that he's got the wrong Weasley brother. And he moves down Iestyn's body, and he knows exactly how he'll taste before he fastens his mouth around the warm hard flesh, salty and sweet and somehow smelling thick and warm. There's a gasp from Iestyn, and Charlie realises that he's more practised at this than he'd thought, and lets the tip of Iestyn's cock nudge against the back of his throat, swallowing hard.  
  
Iestyn winds his hands in Charlie's hair. God, Char, _please_, he's begging, like a starving man, like the furtive nights in the mountains were days away rather than years. And it makes more sense than anything else that's happened to Charlie since the day he lost his memory.  
  
The Wizarding Wireless Network tells Bill that there are storms in the Carpathians this time of year, but he already knows that, because he hasn't heard anything from Charlie for weeks, and his own owls are returning bedraggled and exhausted, the neat little parchment scrolls ripped and soaked through with mountain rain. And he misses Charlie so much it's like a physical ache, and he doesn't know how they managed to get through it for so many years.  
  
It'll get easier, Sophie promises, whenever she sees Bill staring out of the window with a scroll in his hand, whenever she sees him about to pick up his quill. It must do. But he can't tell her that it makes him feel iempty/i, so fucking empty, and there are times in the middle of the night when he wishes he was in Romania himself, when he thinks of the cottages they lived in in Wales and thinks, that must have been heaven.   
  
He's getting better at magic, though it's still coming in fits and starts, with charms being his strong point. Sophie points out that he's word-perfect on Silencing and Locking, that he has been for months now, and teasingly suggests that he must have been a real Casanova at Hogwarts, to be so good at being silent and secret. Bill can't remember, though when he asks his father, he gets a letter by return owl that talks about a succession of pretty girls coming home for the holidays, most of them approved of by his parents, apart from the Slytherin girl who'd charmed her hair black and wore too much make-up. Bill doesn't know how many hours Arthur spent going through old photo albums to remind himself of the names and faces of all these old girlfriends, as if by proving their existence he could erase the shameful truth about his eldest sons.   
  
Bill also doesn't know about the agonies of indecision that Hermione is going through, living three doors away from him. He notices that, as an old flame, he doesn't see very much of her, but supposes that he must have treated her badly.  
  
And, one day, he decides to take her to dinner and apologise. They walk through the new Diagon Alley, with its memorial to the last great Wizarding war, and talk about the research work that she's doing for Remus Lupin at Hogwarts. The name is familiar to Bill, although he can't tell whether he's read about it in the papers, or whether it's a genuine memory - so hard to sort truth from fiction, by now, when he's been trying so hard to put his life back together and coming up with nothing.   
  
Hermione blinks. Remus? Oh, I suppose you wouldn't remember - oh, I don't mean that to be nasty, Bill, I'm sorry -  
  
Bill is used to people apologising for his lack of memory, and cuts her off. No, really, do I know him?  
  
Hermione pours herself another glass of water. Bill, you were - you and him - you were together, very briefly -  
  
And Bill doesn't know what to say.   
  
Iestyn was gone when Charlie woke up, but he's back the next evening. This time, he doesn't say anything, but his eyes are hungry enough to be pleading. And Charlie lets him into bed, kisses the soot on his forehead, and closes his eyes as Iestyn slides his tongue between Charlie's thighs, until there's nothing left in all Charlie's broken memories but the working of Iestyn's tongue, the slow glide of flesh and spit.  
  
Charlie wonders why no-one told him.  
  
In London, Ginny fills in the sixth release form and wonders whether it's really worth it - Charlie's hardly going to remember what the rings mean, after everything he's been through, and really, it isn't as if he's unhappy in the Carpathians, or he'd be home knocking on Bill's door in Hogsmeade. But she knows she's trying to justify her months of silence to herself, and she remembers the look that had passed between her brothers just before midwinter, when Charlie was leaving for Romania. There were so many things she could read into that look. Because she _knew_. And that fleeting, helpless, almost desperate expression on Bill's face was like someone reaching into her chest and squeezing her heart in their fist, because it was still _there_, and no-one else had seemed to realise that love doesn't disappear by making it a family secret.  
  
She signs her name, Virginia Weasley, and dates it. The clerk on the Lost and Returned Property desk looks briefly at the forms, and hands over a small bag with nothing in it.   
  
Ginny wonders if she's going crazy, sending two invisible rings to a brother with amnesia who's living with dragons in Romania, but they were found on Bill and Charlie's bodies when they were carried into Casualty. They're more a ring-shaped absence in the air, when she picks them up and puts them into an envelope marked for Express Floo to the Carpathian mountains, but Ginny remembers her brothers holding hands over the table. She remembers them kissing under the misteltoe when they thought no-one else was looking. She can't bear to see this happening to them.  
  
The long, rambling letter which told Charlie - as well as he could - that Bill thought he might have been bisexual, or at any rate had slept with a man on more than one occasion, and could Charlie remember anything, because Bill had been having some strange dreams about it, arrives back at Bill's room in the Three Broomsticks. Unopened, of course, and the owl almost gnaws off Bill's finger when he tries to coax it to go back out in the wind and the rain and try again. But later, when Bill unfolds it, the ink had run and smudged all the words, until the only things he can make out are his brother's name and the address. Dragon reserve, Carpathians, Romania.  
  
Bill goes out to dinner with Sophie that evening, and tries to forget about the image of Charlie asleep under fur blankets on a rickety wooden bed, his red hair stirring slightly in the draft, the slow rise and fall of his chest, and the horrible painful _missing_ that Bill can still feel inside.  
  
It's a week later that Bill goes out for lunch with Hermione. Sophie is being catty and accusing him of carrying on with a married woman, but Bill has just - never - been able to conjure up any images of himself with Hermione. He can't imagine his fingers tangled in that curly hair, can't imagine how soft she'd feel pressed against him, can't imagine how she'd taste, how she'd kiss. She asks him about his new girlfriend, and Bill laughs, and jokes about Sophie being jealous of him going behind her back, and doesn't notice how it makes Hermione go quiet and look at the menu, because Hermione knows what it's like to be betrayed by Bill, ireally/i betrayed.  
  
Bill says half-way through the main course. Can I ask you something?  
  
She looks slightly startled and nods, putting her fork to one side for a moment.   
  
Bill swallows, wondering how best to start. Well. Okay. Ginny told me that we used to go out, last year.  
  
It was a long time ago, Hermione says, not looking at him.  
  
I know, Bill says, and smiles ruefully. Even longer for me. But, look. I know you're with Harry now, and that was right after we broke up, so I'm guessing that was coming for some time. But -  
  
It wasn't, Hermione interrupts him. We didn't know until - well, a lot of things happened, but it wasn't straight after we broke up, or anything.  
  
People have been giving me that impression.  
  
They're wrong.  
  
Bill sighs. Hermione, I'm not trying to find out about your relationship with Harry. I just - look, I get the impression that I didn't treat you too well when I was with you. Even if you did leave me for Harry, it sounds as though you'd have been perfectly right to. I'm just sorry if I was -  
  
Hermione leans over the table. Bill, it's all in the past now. She fiddles with her napkin. But if you really want to know, yes, you did some pretty bloody awful things to me.  
  
It's the first time Bill's heard her swear, and it takes him by surprise. What - what sort of things?  
  
She stares at him, as though he's a fool for not knowing, and Bill swears under his breath, at all the people who can't believe he really _doesn't_ remember, at himself for not having the faintest memory -  
  
You cheated on me.   
  
Bill swallows, and is about to start apologising, when she cuts him short. With Charlie.  
  
Charlie gets Ginny's package when he's kneeling in the cinders on the wooden floor of Iestyn's room, naked and bathed in the red glow of the dying fire, a long trail of love-bites showing up like strawberry stains on his neck and chest. He doesn't open it right away, though, just leaves it on the bedside table and slides onto the bed beside Iestyn, who's stitching new loops onto Charlie's belt to replace the ones chewed off that morning. It's been weeks since they first had sex on the tattered blankets, weeks since Charlie remembered what it felt like to slide into warm flesh and bite the throat of someone hoarse with gasping. It's been almost a month since he's heard from Bill, and it's starting to wane now, because Iestyn reminds him that he had a life _here_, in the mountains, before the trip to England which ended up with him lying lifeless in St Mungo's.   
  
Aren't you going to open it? Iestyn says, his mouth full of tough woollen yarn. Not many things come by Floo. And, then, with a note of anxiety that Charlie can't yet recognise, he asks: Is it from your brother?  
  
Charlie shakes his head, watching Iestyn bend over the work.  
  
Firelight -  
  
A cottage in the mountains -   
  
Bare skin, and sweat, and strong shoulders -  
  
And Charlie tells himself that the only reason Iestyn reminds him so suddenly and strongly of Bill is that he's seen his brother by firelight so many times. He must have done, in Wales, because they shared a room, and Charlie suddenly wants to kiss the hollow of Iestyn's neck, but it smells different - wrong - though he doesn't know how he expects it to smell.  
  
He gets these feelings, sometimes, that things aren't right.  
  
From Ginny, my sister, Charlie says, and pulls out his penknife to slit the package open. The cardboard is tough, and it takes him several attempts, but eventually he can pull the seal away, and reach inside.  
  
A letter, and some - rings, he says, unfolding the letter.  
  
Well, let's see them, then? Iestyn says indistinctly, peering over Charlie's shoulder.  
  
Charlie frowns, and holds up the palm of his hand. Two plain gold rings, slightly scratched in places, held together by a thin piece of wire.  
  
  
  
Iestyn, are you going blind?  
  
Charlie looks up, and Iestyn isn't staring at his hand any more. He's staring straight at Charlie, and he looks almost afraid.  
  
They must be from St Mungo's, look, they're tagged, Charlie says, turning back to the package, and when he looks up again, Iestyn is halfway to the door, walking barefoot out into the snow. Are you going _mad_? Charlie shouts, but Iestyn doesn't appear to hear him, and the door slams hard enough to make the floor creak.  
  
_Charlie -  
  
I don't know if these will mean anything to you, but I couldn't bear not to send them. You and Bill were wearing them, the night of the attack. And I can't see them, though I'm willing to bet that you can.  
  
Take care of yourself, big brother.  
  
Your little sister._  
  
Charlie cuts the tag off the rings with the rough blade of his knife, and puts one of them on. Thick, gold, plain rings, identical in every way - apart from the fact that one of them was thicker, but then Bill's fingers have always been more slender than Charlie's. Charlie holds his hand up to the light, looking for an inscription on the band.   
  
And he notices how much it looks like a wedding ring.  
  
Bill knows, now, and he can place the dreams about red hair, about pale freckled skin, about burn scars, about someone whispering his name in the dark. Remembering is like trying to wade through treacle, but he thinks he knows, and he thinks he understands. And he falls asleep alone in the bed at the Three Broomsticks, and dreams of his brother pulling his shirt over his head, revealing smooth skin and shadows, and Bill going to him across the bed on hands and knees, crawling to Charlie, and hearing him whisper Oh, _Bill_, as Bill kisses his way up Charlie's inner thighs, swallows his cock.  
  
He sends the owl as soon as he wakes up, because he's almost sure. And then he looks in the bedroom mirror, and it's there as clear as a photo - Charlie's arms wrapped around his shoulders, Charlie's lips on his neck, the fast urgency of his kisses.  
  
Bill sends Hermione two bunches of yellow roses. One to say sorry. One to say thanks.  
  
Iestyn sits on the watchtower, watching the pale sun break through the haze on the horizon. The storms are starting to lift, now, which is a relief, because the dragons with wing injuries were flying in rough weather and having old wounds ripped open by the sheer force of the gale, blowing over the peaks. They've already had one dead that way, and it had taken Iestyn and Charlie almost a day to drag it off the mountainside and get it under canvas, before the snow could bury it for good. You don't let valuable dragon parts - blood, scales, heartstring - go to waste. Iestyn exhales, his breath appearing like smoke in the cold air, and thinks of Charlie, covered in dragon blood up to the elbows and laughing. And it makes Iestyn's stomach turn, to think what he's done.  
  
He intended to tell Charlie after the first time. But Iestyn remembers almost a decade ago, making love to Charlie while Charlie was so in love with his brother that it was painful to look at, and he wanted to just - put the clock back. Have a chance with Charlie that the memory of Bill had never let him have.   
  
Charlie had spent whole nights crying silently, Iestyn remembers. Charlie never thought he'd woken Iestyn up. And Charlie would get up and walk to the door of the hut and look out into the snow, north-west to England. And Iestyn would pretend that he wasn't falling for Charlie, and he'd treat Charlie badly, which was a fucking awful thing to do, because Charlie would look at Iestyn again when he came to the door - however many nights later - in a way that was resigned and longing and bitterly, bitterly lonely.  
  
And then, years later, Iestyn had come to England, and met Bill, with his handsome face and long hair, and he had been everything to Charlie that Iestyn wasn't.  
  
I thought I'd find you here. Charlie's voice is calm, and Iestyn turns around slowly.  
  
He shrugs. Watching the dragons.  
  
Charlie nods, and sits down on the boards next to him. Not touching, not reaching out. Iestyn can see the letter from his sister in Charlie's hand, but he still can't see the rings. But then, he remembers, he was never meant to.  
  
There's a long silence, as the sun comes up over the peaks.  
  
What do you want to know? Iestyn asks.  
  
Charlie hesitates for a moment, his hand going to touch something on the third finger of his left hand. Tell me everything, he says quietly.  
  
The stairs cut into the cliff-face are slippery with days of snow and slush, and carved so haphazardly in places that they're tilting down towards a sheer drop into the ravine, but Charlie takes them running, his heart thudding painfully in his chest, grabbing onto the cliff for balance and coming away with handfuls of rock and shale. The small dragon charm around his neck is hissing at him in anger for being so stupid, but he doesn't notice it - not a gift from a girlfriend as he'd supposed, anyway, but from a friend he can barely remember, nothing as vivid as how he remembers Bill, and now he _knows_.  
  
The photo is there, where he left it, under the mattress with all the other bits and pieces from home. Charlie holds it up to the light, watching the photo-Charlie catch the dog - Jenny - by the collar and crouch down beside her, smiling at the camera. He's wearing a wedding band on his left hand, and there's a very obvious love-bite on his neck, and he's wet and muddy and laughing, and Charlie _remembers_.   
  
Bill had grabbed the camera just after Jenny came out of the stream and shook all over them, splattering their picnic with muddy river-water. The field was just behind their house in Hogsmeade. The love-bite was from the previous night, when Charlie had come in from work and Bill had been hiding in the hallway shadows and grabbed him, pushing him up against the wall loud enough to make the picture-frames rattle, and had started undressing him before Charlie had even got his breath back to say hello.  
  
He remembers.  
  
The letter is there, propped on the kitchen table beside Neville's coffee mug, and Ginny is fuming.   
  
_Ginny, love -  
  
I just popped in to St Mungo's today to go through all the paperwork to release Bill and Charlie's things - and they said you'd been in already. Showed me the piece of paper, anyway. Two rings, gold, invisible. Ginny, dear, what are you going to do with them? I was going to keep them at home -_  
  
She lights another cigarette as she re-reads her father's letter. Filthy habit, smoking. And she wonders if Charlie has got the rings yet, and whether he's worked it all out, or whether they're just lying in the corner of his room, something to add to the pile of memories and people and things he just doesn't have a place for.  
  
She sits there until her cigarette has burnt almost down to her fingertips, and then gets up to fetch parchment.  
_  
Dad -  
  
I've sent the rings to Charlie. They belong to him and Bill, and I didn't want to keep them from him._  
  
She sits there a good hour longer, watching the shadows creep across the table, marching past the jam-jars and cat toys, before adding:  
_  
It's what Mum would've wanted.  
  
Ginny._  
  
Charlie leaves that afternoon, taking a Portkey to London and then the Floo straight on to Hogsmeade, because he still hasn't remembered how to Apparate. Part of him almost enjoys the time it takes to walk over the mountain to the Vasclav Pass, to pick up the nearest Portkey - an old and crumbling dragon-skeleton, almost buried into the stone itself with the passage of time - because it gives him time to think. About Bill. And he still can't think of anything he could say, or anything he could do, because nothing he's learnt at school or on the mountains has prepared him for telling his brother that they were lovers, and that Charlie remembers everything. He remembers the first time they slept together, when they were sixteen and uncertain and it was all over far too quickly. He remembers Bill coming home from an evening with Hermione, and Charlie taking him against the wall, with a strength that was half rage and half sorrow. He remembers Bill underneath a waterfall in Tregoyd, naked and gleaming with his wet hair falling over his face, and holding out his hand for Charlie to join him.  
  
It's overwhelming, and Charlie doesn't know how to deal with it - like living through a lifetime's worth of memories in one day, all blurred and smudged together until all he can remember is Bill, and that he loves him.   
  
Bill is sitting at his desk under the window when the knock comes at the door; and the desk is strewn with scribbled notes on Elementary Arithmancy, with half-started owls to Charlie spilling onto the windowsill and lying in drifts on the floor, because it took him what seemed like a hundred attempts before he finally got the words written down, and even then they didn't look _right_. And when the knock comes, Bill puts down his quill and stretches his legs, and opens the door with a flick of his wand, though he's not sure who he's trying to fool, door-opening is practically a pre-Hogwarts skill.  
  
And his brother Charlie walks into the room, and Bill feels something twist inside his chest, something raw and terrible, and to his surprise and shame he can feel a lump starting in his throat, and he tries to choke it down, and fails, and stands up.  
  
Did you get my owl? he asks finally. Charlie is wearing leather gauntlets and dragon-hide boots, and there's still a faint damp smattering of snow around the buckles and creases. He smells of dragons, Bill realises, and that's something he'd never realised before: smoke and ashes and green things.   
  
Charlie shakes his head, standing there with his head almost touching the ceiling, because it's a tiny cramped little room. No -  
  
Bill can feel his stomach turn, because Charlie _doesn't know_, and he's standing in Bill's bedroom and Bill can recognise now that yes, he wants to strip Charlie naked, he wants to bend back Charlie's neck and kiss every last freckle, wants to take Charlie into his arms and love him, and he can't because they've both forgotten.   
  
It's been too stormy to get owls, Charlie says, and steps forward into the room. I came because Ginny sent me these.  
  
And he opens his left hand to show Bill that he's wearing a plain gold ring on his third finger, and there's another one resting in the palm of his hand, and there's something so familiar about it that it makes Bill dizzy -  
  
We were wearing them, Charlie says awkwardly. When we were taken to St Mungo's.  
  
He pauses, and looks down at the floor. I don't know if you remember -  
  
Bill says quietly, and it sounds as though his own voice is coming from miles and miles away, like he's speaking from the moon and Charlie is here on earth. But - but people have told me.  
  
And he looks up, and sees Charlie's face. Char -  
  
Charlie is ashen.   
  
Char, I love -  
  
After that, it happens so quickly. One minute Charlie is dripping the Romanian snow on Bill's floor, the next he's in Bill's arms, feeling warm and heavy and just - so - _right_, his face in the curve of Bill's neck, his breath moist on Bill's cheek. Bill realises that they haven't really held each other in months, not since Charlie blinked his eyes open to see Bill sitting on the edge of his bed and holding a hastily-made banner saying Welcome Back' that the twins had charmed to dance around and sing. And he realises that he'd forgotten much more than the smell of dragons about Charlie; he'd forgotten the way the silver-rippled scars feel against the crook of his elbow, the wideness of Charlie's shoulders, the explosion of freckles under the curve of his jaw. And he squeezes Charlie tightly, because there's so much to say, and he doesn't know how to begin saying it.  
  
I suppose I love you' is a good start, he says finally, swallowing hard.  
  
Charlie laughs, quietly. As good as any, I suppose.   
  
Then Charlie leans in towards Bill's face, and Bill can see his brother has black rings around his eyes, and he supposes that Charlie hasn't been sleeping much, and then Charlie brushes his lips gently against Bill's, almost as though he's scared.  
  
They look at each other for a moment.  
  
Do you remember - Bill starts, and Charlie nods. Then you'll have to show me.  
  
And Charlie does, kissing Bill hard enough to push him back against the rickety little desk, spilling ink onto the floor, making Bill wind his arms around Charlie's neck and pull him in closer, harder, and Charlie's mouth tastes of salt and it's hotter and wetter than Bill could ever have imagined. Charlie is struggling with the buttons on Bill's shirt, and Bill frees one arm from Charlie's grip long enough to tear the material out and down, ripping the seams open around the neck. When Charlie fastens his lips to Bill's neck, it makes his brother groan, deep and low, and take a half-step forward until his cock is crushed into Charlie's thigh, hot and hard against the thick winter clothing. But Charlie feels it, and whispers Ah, Bill -, and his voice is hoarse.  
  
Bill thinks he remembers, as Charlie tears the shirt downwards, the flat of his palms rubbing hard against Bill's nipples, almost painfully, and he says - I used to have piercings -  
  
And Charlie nods, and mouths around one pink nipple, We'll get more.  
  
And then Bill knows he remembers, and slides one hand down under the waistband of Charlie's trousers, some thick dark woollen material, and reaches crisp, thick hair. You never wore underwear, he says, and realises how stupid he sounds, but Charlie is nipping at his right nipple, his hands gone to cup Bill's arse through his jeans, his maddeningly thick jeans, and it's difficult to think straight when his brother is doing that with his mouth -  
  
Charlie smiles. Of course not. Why would I? And the why' is whispered against Bill's chest, and the would' is a deep sucking bite to the side of Bill's stomach, and the I' is Charlie pressing his face against Bill's cock, through the jeans and through Bill's underwear, and suddenly it feels like it's paper-thin, and Bill scrabbles frantically to get a hold on the desk as Charlie laps, wet and warm, at the straining fabric.  
  
Char, I love, I love -  
  
And then it's almost a sob, and Bill can feel it catching in his throat, and Charlie pulls away and stands up.  
  
Oh, Bill, love -  
  
I'm okay, he insists. Just - catch my breath -  
  
Charlie pulls him close, fitting Bill's face into the curve of his neck, and Bill can feel the tears coming, but he's trying to fight them back. 'm sorry - I'm spoiling it - he says, and lets out a long, shaky breath, his hands coming to rest on Charlie's shoulder. It's just - it's so fast - I didn't remember it would be -  
  
Like this? Charlie finishes, and Bill nods, and tries to tell it to Charlie in his eyes, because he's so scared that he's going to start crying properly, and he doesn't want to be getting Charlie's shirt damp, he wants to feel Charlie opening him up with deep, wet swipes of his tongue, he wants to press Charlie into every part of him, to put them back together. It's so strange, and Bill still can't remember much of it, and he isn't prepared for the way he's coming alive under Charlie's touch. Charlie, his _brother_, his baby brother. And Charlie has streaks of soot on his neck, and it makes Bill start laughing, a laugh that rises up from nowhere until Charlie has to laugh too, and it's all suddenly too ridiculous to worry about the how and the why of it.   
  
Charlie twines his hands in Bill's hair. Bill slides his hands down Charlie's chest, down to the pale freckled skin of his stomach, and though the tears are wet on Bill's face, it doesn't matter any more.   
  
Ginny almost knows before she's told; she pauses outside Bill's door, weighing up the chances of it really being true, and knocks twice.  
  
She hears footsteps, and Bill opens the door, and it's written all over his face as if a Howler was screaming it. There's something _there_ that's come back to him. He's standing taller, though Bill has always been over a foot taller than Ginny to start with. And just below the collar of his shirt - a shirt, she notices with a wry smile, that's been patched up very recently with a badly done Reparo charm - there's a faint red mark, as though someone who isn't too good with a wand has struggled to vanish a lovebite. And Bill's new girlfriend hadn't been the lovebite type. Ginny suspects - no, Ginny _knows_ - that her second-eldest brother is.  
  
Bill smiles. Come in, Gin.  
  
And Charlie is sitting on the bed, under the gables. His hair is messier than usual, and he hasn't bothered to put his shirt back on, and Ginny sees it hanging off the corner of Bill's desk, near a pool of black ink.   
  
You've got new scars, Charlie, she says quietly, nodding to the latest red-pink welt, running the length of his right arm, curling under his wrist.  
  
Charlie nods. Silence.  
  
Ginny can't stop herself from grinning. So have you, Bill. Bill's smile turns into a guilty look, and his hand moves towards his neck. Still have to work on the charms, hmm?  
  
Charlie shoots a look at Bill. I told you that Reparo wasn't fooling anyone.  
  
Bill sticks his tongue out at Charlie, and it looks so strange for a moment. Ginny was too young to remember growing up with Bill and Charlie, but she was never too young to be told about them, and shown photos, and after her mother's fond tales over tea and biscuits in the afternoons before she went to Hogwarts, Ginny sometimes feels like she remembers her brothers when they were much, much younger. A false memory, she supposes, because there's no way she'd remember Charlie's toy wand backfiring and turning her father's armchair into a cheesecake, but even so. Seeing Bill sticking his tongue out makes him look decades younger in her mind, makes him look like the memory-Bill she's created. That's how it must be for Bill and Charlie now, she thinks, because everything is second-hand and blurry. And she's seeing the rumpled bed, Charlie's shirt torn off, the lovebites, Bill's guilty grin, and at the same time she's seeing Bill and Charlie racing each other on toy broomsticks, in memories she's never had.  
  
They don't keep Ginny long; they tease her that she must be getting back to her gaggle of admirers, and she laughs just like she used to when they teased her in school holidays about her crush on famous Harry Potter.  
  
They talk for hours, until the sky outside changes from blue to violet to black, and Charlie says that it's not as dark as Romania, because of the streetlights from Muggle towns; and Bill points out that Charlie has never really liked the dark, anyway, and that was why they had a Snitch nightlight until they were ten.  
  
And Charlie points out that it just gave him a much better excuse to sneak into Bill's bed.   
  
And Bill laughs, and turns off the light just to show that he can, with a lazy flick of his wand, and he won't admit how many hours of practice it took him to be able to do it without making the gable window shatter.  
  
And it's only a matter of seconds before they find each other in the dark, hands reaching out, warm skin to warm skin.  
  
**The Hogwarts Online backstory in one easy paragraph**  
  
Bill and Charlie have been sleeping together since they were teenagers, Charlie was hopelessly in love with Bill but Bill didn't get it, Charlie left to go to Romania and met his best friend and sometime lover, Iestyn; meanwhile, Bill got married and divorced and had a brief affair with Remus Lupin. Charlie suffers a near-fatal accident and returns to England under Bill's care, and they rekindle their physical relationship, but Bill is going out with Hermione Granger, and he's forced to tell her the truth about his relationship with his brother, a coming-out process that results in him facing up to his love for Charlie and them settling down together. Ron dies at a World Cup Quidditch match (Death Eater attack), and Charlie gets a job in the twins' shop, working alongside Pansy Parkinson, who he comes to regard as a younger sister, until he finds out she's a Death Eater. The two brothers tell their parents, with predictable shock and horror, but eventually the family reconciles itself. Bill and Charlie move to the Tregoyd dragon reserve in North Wales, which is where the end of Hogwarts Online leaves them.


End file.
